From the Province of the Cat #40 – The harness of Necessity

The Battle of Waterloo: a disaster for the Scottish Highlands? The Battle of Waterloo: a disaster for the Scottish Highlands?

by George Gunn

This is the story of two working class soldiers who both died in battle. One was a crofter from Caithness and the other a weaver from Lancashire. One was killed fighting a “tyrant” who would have probably set him free. The other was killed by a tyrannical “free” government he had fought to defend.

Donald Sutherland from Badbea met his end at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 fighting the army of Napoleon. In 1792 Donald along with 80 other people were evicted from their native Langwell strath by Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster to make way for Cheviot sheep and condemned to subsist on a windswept cliff top 200 feet above the Moray Firth. Mothers had to tether their children, like their animals, to the rough ground in order to stop them from being blown away.

On the 16th of August 1819 John Lees from Oldham, along with 60 to 80,000 other people, attended a public meeting on St Peter’s Field in Manchester to hear Henry Hunt give a talk about the need for Parliamentary reform, universal suffrage and an end to taxation without representation, poverty, hunger and unemployment. Along with 15 other people he was cut down and killed by the cavalry sabres of the 15th Hussars who, aided by the mounted Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, charged into the crowd to arrest the speakers. Between 600 and 700 people were seriously injured as a result of this violent military action. John Lees was a veteran of Waterloo. He died some days later from the wounds he received at Peterloo, as the St Peter’s Field massacre became known.

From Badbea to Waterloo – and from Peterloo to the present – is just over two hundred years. Indeed later this month there will be lots of patriotic celebrations to mark the 18th of June 1815 when the army of the Seventh Coalition under the command of the Duke of Wellington, with the timely assistance of Blücher and the Prussians, defeated the French army of Napoleon Bonaparte in a muddy field in Belgium. This bicentenary will celebrate this bloody affray which the narrative of conservative history declares created “the modern world”. The French incurred 41,000 dead and wounded at Waterloo and the Seventh Coalition 24,000. These figures are approximates and do not take into consideration those who went missing or simply (sensibly) deserted. By the late evening Wellington’s army had been effectively destroyed and if had not been for the arrival of Blücher’s fresh regiments history would tell a different story.

Napoleon may have been finally defeated in 1815 and the crowned heads of Europe could at last breathe a sigh of relief but there was no victory for the ordinary people on either side of the conflict. No sooner was the Napoleonic War over than the economy of Britain collapsed and the state entered into a deep economic and political crisis. What Waterloo ensured was that the hierarchal political structure of Europe remained the same. What was triggered in its aftermath was a general desire within the emerging working class for political and economic reform. It became apparent very quickly to the weavers and textile workers of the North England and to the crofters and fishermen of the North of Scotland (who were Wellington’s foot soldiers) that economic inequality leads inevitably to political inequality. After Waterloo the British could concentrate on building and securing their empire now that their main rivals, the French, were subdued.

The reaction and instinct of the British government then – as it is now – to any demand for political reform was to restrict the rights of the people, clamp down on press freedoms such as they were and to treat every gathering of ordinary people with the suspicion that sedition or even revolution was being planned. They were right to be alarmed. What Peterloo proved was that they were actually clueless – as they still are now – as to how to deal with peaceful demonstrations by ordinary people with real and genuine grievances. Their immediate response was to go on the attack.

The “Six Acts” passed by the then Home Secretary Lord Sidmouth in December 1819 treated any meeting for “radical reform” as “an overt act of treasonable conspiracy”. These were the most reactionary pieces of legislation passed by any British government and effectively outlawed free assembly, publishing without a government “stamp”, writing that was considered blasphemous or seditious and sped up the process of prosecution in the courts while at the same time restricting the opportunities for bail. The Prime Minister Lord Liverpool introduced these measures to the House of Commons in order “to prevent a revolution”. Has Theresa May been consulting with Lord Sidmouth one wonders? Sidmouth was, after all, the father of the conspiracy of the government against the people.

What could be accurately argued that what was a “treasonable conspiracy”, unlike the cries for reform, was the introduction of the Corn Laws in 1815 to protect British farming interests and the landed and property class that benefit from it. This resulted in a spiralling of food prices and contributed to the lowering of wages; so that before Waterloo a weaver, who could expect to earn 15 shillings a week, was earning as little as 5 shillings or less after Waterloo. So with less money the people were expected to pay more for their food. There was no relief offered. The industrialists blamed it all, as now, on “market forces”. These same market forces cleared the inner straths of the Highlands of Scotland of their people in order to make way for sheep but once the wool price collapsed after 1815 the landlords had to create an alternative income stream which is the hunting, shooting and fishing estates we “enjoy” today. You could argue that Sutherland is empty today because of Waterloo.

Instead of “celebrating” the bicentenary of the battle (the French, unsurprisingly, are not so keen) what we should be concerned about in 2015 is that we are returning to the same economic situation which existed post-1815, with the same attached, Sidmouth-like, repressive legislation to go along with it. How else can you explain the Tories notion to opt out of The Human Rights Act, which only came into force in UK in October 2000 and which, reasonably, has the effect of codifying the protections in the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law? They may not have flagged it up in the recent Queen’s speech but they are determined to be rid of it.

The European Convention itself takes as its inspiration the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was a response to the Second World War and more locally a response to the growth of totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe. The idea is that the Convention, by protecting human rights across Europe, can also protect member states from “subversion” – obviously in the 1950’s this was from communism – and explains the constant references to values and principles that are “necessary in a democratic society.” The tragic flaw here is that the European Convention on Human Rights does not define what these values and principles actually are. For Scotland this “subversion” is reactionary legislation forced upon us by a Tory government in Westminster.

If these values and principles were so defined and acted upon then David Cameron would not get away with the tawdry ploy of excluding 1.5 million European Union citizens from his UKIP inspired forthcoming referendum on the EU. Like their predecessors in the early nineteenth century the current Tories are equally allergic to democracy when it doesn’t suit them. The Scots returning 56 SNP MP’s last month was “madness”. Allowing EU citizens living in Britain to vote in a referendum which would directly affect them would be an “unacceptable dilution of the voice of the British people”. Was that the 19th century Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh or the former Defence Secretary Liam Fox: can anyone spot the difference?

The Tories have never understood that the first part of the word democracy, the Greek “deme”, means “resident”. It was the only way the ancient Athenians could make their new-fangled representative system work to protect them against tyranny. Residency was also the basis of the right to vote in the Scottish referendum last year. It was what gave the process political integrity. What the Tories are proposing is a violation of these EU citizens’ human rights and a deliberate dilution of democracy. It would be germane to remember here that in Britain we, constitutionally, are “subjects” not “citizens” and that we do not actually live in a democracy; we live in a monarchy. Such things as the recent dissolution of the Westminster Political and Constitutional Reform Committee does not auger well for any future change to the status quo emanating from that parliament. The Tories want everything to stay the same on the surface while changing everything to their advantage behind a smokescreen of information redacting cac which are the red top tabloids. The proposed Bill of Rights and Responsibilities will ensure, no doubt, that we abrogate our rights in order to fulfil our responsibilities which are, make no mistake, to agree at all times with the Tory government and “dae whit wur telt”.

The Tories also plan to revive the Communications Data Bill which is known as “the snooper’s charter”. This Bill will require internet providers and mobile phone companies to maintain records of all their customers’ activities, including email correspondence, voice calls and website usage. Home Secretary, Theresa May, has vowed to put the bill to parliament in this term of government. Lord Sidmouth just used to open the letters of political suspects, have them copied, and then put them back in the post, but I suppose surveillance is only limited by the available technology. Where are human rights in all this data gathering? Sidmouth, Liverpool, and Castlereagh – Osborne, Cameron and May: is there a pattern emerging? Where exactly are the values and principles in these dark days that are “necessary in a democratic society.”? Just as in Sidmouth’s regime in 1819 when they were trampled under the hooves of the 15th Hussars horses so in 21st century Britain they are being eroded under the concocted paranoia of an authoritarian administration.

In the play “Agamemnon” (circa 458 BC) Aeschylus has the hero of the title make a choice –whether or not he should sacrifice his daughter for a fair wind to sail to Troy? Agamemnon makes the wrong choice – he slaughters Iphigenia. The belief system of ancient Greece was driven by an addiction to Fate but the Chorus in the play remind the audience that Fate is not absolute: Fate confronts humanity with a choice, and if an individual makes the wrong choice the fault is theirs. Aeschylus then writes that by doing this cruel deed Agamemnon

“Then put on

The harness of Necessity.”

For us in modern Scotland the political “harness of Necessity” is ensuring that the SNP stay in power until Scotland becomes an independent country. When it is we can vote for someone else. We can also, at some point in the near future, choose not be oppressed by right wing Tory governments voted into power by an English electorate who continue to make the wrong choices. We can lever our country into independence by our political will because it is a just cause and it will ultimately, as Thomas Muir insisted, prevail.

In 1819 John Lees of Oldham was murdered on St Peter’s Field in Manchester by the contempt and fear his rulers had for those they ruled over. A contempt the Duke of Wellington shared for the ordinary soldiers who served and died for him. Donald Sutherland fell at Waterloo fighting for the wrong side. He and his fellow soldiers in the 92nd Highland Foot should have turned their muskets around and joined the French and perhaps in an alternative history, where the values of the French Revolution prevail, his beloved straths and glens would not be currently empty and owned by a small band of monied kleptocrats.

The Battle of Waterloo did not create the modern world. The people of Scotland, at least in our own country, can. It is necessary and it does not need to be a harness.

But we need your support to move forward…

13 Comments

Donald Urquhart
2 years ago

John Mooney
2 years ago

Redgauntlet
2 years ago

Stirring stuff George Gunn, it gars me greet to see such talent and passion wasted on a nation of hedgers and fearties like the Scots....

...Stendhal described the English as "the most barbarous people on earth" for precisely the reason you mention, that is, for defeating Napoleon at Waterloo. By doing so, Stendhal said that the British army had also defeated the old traditions of English liberty and left the country in the hands of "an alliance of rich merchants and the nobility against the poor". So not much has changed as you say.

But, I fear, you are wrong to suggest that Scotland is more progressive re EU voters than England. The referendum eligibility criteria followed the same criteria as the Holyrood elections, which, if I recall correctly, was laid out in the devolution bill which gave us the parliament. So, more like happy chance than a policy.

Also, the SNP's draft Constitution did not include residency as a qualification of Scottish citizenship. As the draft SNP Constitution reads, EU citizens resident in Scotland would not have a vote at a hypothetical Scottish general election either.

All of this is par for the course in the rest of Europe too. It is shocking but it reveals just how much the EU is a trade agreement essentially with a bit of marketing thrown in. It needs radical reform.

So, if you are resident in a European country other than the one you were born in, unless you apply for the nationality of the second country, you are effectively disenfranchised altogether, and you may be eligible to pay tax not in one country, but TWO.

Blair and Brown lowered the time period of residency abroad from 20 to 15 years after which you do not get a vote at the UK election. So, a Scot living in, Spain say, after 20 years gets no vote either at the British or the Spanish general elections, unless he or she applies for Spanish nationality. But that person expected to pay taxes... twice.

So, the obvious answer is to leave Europe, which is a fusty museum of bankers, technocrats and culture administrators and go somewhere exciting like Asia or South America. Europe is the most boring place to be right now I would say.

leavergirl
2 years ago

"What Peterloo proved was that they were actually clueless – as they still are now – as to how to deal with peaceful demonstrations by ordinary people with real and genuine grievances. Their immediate response was to go on the attack."

Redgauntlet
2 years ago

The only reason the much cherished free movement of people in Europe is allowed is because it is ALSO the free movement of labour, ie, to serve European capital.

My hope for the EU referendum? That in Scotland we could take advantage to actually come up with a package of EU reforms in completely the opposite direction David Cameron and the Tories want to take us. We really need to do something here. Maybe something is being done already by someone?

The EU either takes a big leap forward and creates genuinely European institutions with genuine European citizens and true democratic representation - the European Parliament, which does not have even the powers of a second chamber of any European legislature is one of the few examples of what I mean - or it might well all start to unravel,I wouldn't be surprised. What the EU is just now is a club for elected national governments to agree on certain policies across the continent, most of which are limited to trade, and all the horse-trading which goes with that.

Free movement of goods and labour, but not rights!!! From the continent which gave the world Fascism and Stalinism, Auschwitz and the Gulag.

I can't think of a single European leader of any weight who you could say has a vision of the EU like their predecessors did. The result is stasis.

We need a European bill of rights, urgently, and we need a European parliament with full powers to decide on pan European issues, not this cosy club of right-wing PM´s with their lackey president of the Commission, your careerists like Junker or Barroso, men you wouldn't sit next to on the train, YES men to national governments, which have national elections to win and aren't really that bothered about the idea of Europe.

Darien
2 years ago

One of the finest articles I've read for quite a while, thank you George. This essay should be a compulsory read in all Scottish schools, especially those fee paying ones in Edinburgh which no doubt teach the Scottish 'establishment of tomorrow' that Waterloo was a great British victory. Like all relatively recent British armed conflicts, the ordinary folk always pay a heavy price, directly and in the lengthy debt-ridden impoverished aftermath. Lets hope the 56 can help deliver Scotland's people to a level of humanity well beyond the tragedies regularly imposed by our British unionist harness.

Redgauntlet
2 years ago

So, George Gunn, that is the reward the petty NATIONAL governments of NATIONALISTIC European nation States bestow on the fools - usually young, innocent people - who actually believe all of the crap and the lies people are told about being"EU citizens" and live as Europeans...they end up`taxed twice, have no voting rights and my bet no pension either at the end of it all.

What a disgrace that whorehouse in Brussels is, because "Europe" is a whore whose pimps are those politicians you see in photos after those EU summits, pimps who will prostitute the idea of Europe to the sound of Beethoven's Ninth in exchange for capitalist gain and to the detriment of fundamental rights of European citizens...

There is no European Union. There is a free trading space with free movement of labour, period. That is not a "union", that is a single market. To have a union you need....sorry, obvious fucking point, European citizens...how many of them are there?

The symbol of Europe is an equestrian statue of some murdering and colonizing "military hero" covered in a patina of bird shit, surrounded by Japanese and American tourists taking photos, as a tourist guide goes on in three languages about how civilized, cultured and superior we are to the rest of the world....

maxi kerr
2 years ago

A really good thought provoking story of how it was/is.
If we could only make this and other incidents in history easy to understand for some of the less well informed members of society then i think it could make a huge impact on the way plebyserfs respond to the kleptocrats.

Fed up with the Lies and Propaganda of the London Media Industrial Complex
2 years ago

The Rothschilds made a fortune out of it, they knew the result of Waterloo before everyone else did, they said ( lied ) that Napoleon had won, the London Stock Exchange collapsed and then they proceeded to buy everyone's shares on the cheap. They've owned the country ever since, prime ministers are just sock puppets.

Fed up with the Lies and Propaganda of the London Media Industrial Complex
2 years ago

Muscleguy
2 years ago

By the time of Waterloo the values of the French Republic had been subsumed by Napoleon's megalomania. This was a man who put his children on the various thrones of European nations he conquered. His children or his favourite generals. Marshal Ney for eg was made King of Naples. The Grande Alliance that invaded Russia in 1812 did not go to set the serfs free and did not attempt to do so.

The French had to repeatedly struggle after Waterloo to re-establish the republic they now enjoy (though with an overmighty, monarchical president instead).

If you wish to revisit history you must be accurate, Waterloo was a clash of great powers, a fight between monarchs on all sides. The French even brought theirs to the battle, though his fabled powers of generalship were strangely absent, much like they were in the meat grinder of Borodino on the road to Moscow in 1812. Nobody there was fighting for liberté, egalité or fraternité other than the ignorant and the deluded. They fought for their Empereur, not a simple Roi for Napoleon, let alone a Presidente.